


Three

by EllsterSMASH



Series: Three!verse [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkwardness, Blow Jobs, Cullenlingus, Cunnilingus, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, F/M, Minor Cassandra Pentaghast/Varric Tethras, Minor Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Minor Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford, Modern Thedas, POV Third Person Limited, Sera - Freeform, Short Chapters, Smut, Varric Tethras - Freeform, cullen rutherford - Freeform, mildly regretful smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2018-12-11 06:17:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11708565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllsterSMASH/pseuds/EllsterSMASH
Summary: She’s a fuck up, a dropout, a mess, an embarrassment. Her roots went deep but the soil was shit, and she couldn’t grow there. So she left. She came here and started over. But for what?





	1. One (Prologue)

She’s a fuck up, a dropout, a mess, an embarrassment. Her roots went deep but the soil was shit, and she couldn’t grow there. So she left. She came here and started over. But for what? So she could wake up, exist, go pour drinks for the sad old men and the boys who pretended not to be, go home, sleep, rinse and repeat? So she could polish glasses that already shone and save her meager paychecks for . . .

Well, that’s the question.

The man in the corner—he’s been here before. He watches people like she does. Even watches her sometimes, though everyone does. Pretending like they’ll know if she adds too little of the good stuff, or maybe hoping she’ll drop a bottle.

She steals a glance at his table, and sees long fingers twirling an empty glass.

She grabs a clean one. Can’t quite reach the top shelf; the bottle tips back onto her steady fingertips and into the safety of her palm before she upturns it once more.

Three times. That’s enough to ask for a name, right?


	2. Two

It’s been four days.

Four days since she asked his name and held out her hand for his glass. He had looked so surprised that she’d asked. Maybe a server would have been polite about it, but she isn’t about to add that to her job description. He had stared intently at her open palm, then up at her face with questions all over his. His eyes were—

_beautiful_

—a stormy gray, or blue, or green. It’s always hard to tell in the dark, but no one stares into another’s eyes in a place like this. It isn’t meant for that.

“Solas,” he had answered and she’d smiled—at least a little. “I didn’t order that.”

She had told him it was on the house, but it wasn’t. She had bought it for him. That shit is too expensive to give away. His tip suggested he’d realized.

The woman at the end gets her attention and lifts two fingers for another. Athi upturns a fresh glass, slips one bottle from the shelf and one from the refrigerator, ices, pours, garnishes with lime. Sets it down on a fresh napkin. Her patron offers no gratitude, just holds her cup of bubbles like a loved one’s hand.

He had said it, though. “Thank you,” with a hint of suspicion and more than a little surprise. Genuine. She can’t unhear his voice with its soft fricatives and easy tone.

She blinks, notices the frame she’s been staring toward is crooked.

Fricatives? Really? Creators. She needs to get a grip, not a date.

Unfortunately, she’s never been very good at either.

The counter is clean, is always clean, but she squeezes the water from a rag that smells of bleach and wipes it down anyway. No one’s glass is empty or about to be, so she sidles around the bar to right the errant decor. Almost makes it back to her post without thinking about him, too, but not quite.

He hasn’t been back since then.

Maybe he was just passing through, or maybe he found another bar with interesting people to look at, or maybe her hand had been dirty. She’s not sure why she cares.

The door jingles and afternoon light swells across the counter. She squints, blinks, but her eyes don’t adjust until it’s gone. She looks anyway. Two figures, neither of them him, but still they shrug off their jackets and sit at his table.

No, not  _his._

Three times and a name does not a regular make.


	3. Three

She saw the sun come up last night. Or, well, this morning. Earlier today. No, before she slept, so yesterday.

Whatever.

The point is, it’s still morning, and way too early for this shit. Too early for terrible roommates and loud noises and that fucking untuned thrift-store kid-sized guitar. Too early to have her eyes open. Too early to be alive, maybe.

But Sera is the shittiest roommate in Thedas and she doesn’t know how to play the guitar. Athi had smashed the tiny guitar into tinier pieces, though, so that solves that. The more pressing issue is that Sera is also the type of shitty roommate to forget to buy more coffee. And Athi is the type of shitty person who breaks people’s guitars without coffee.

So here she is, alive, awake, sort of dressed, and outside of all places. It’s fucking bright here. She glares at the sign across the street that screams "DON’T WALK" and walks anyway.

She’s still ten feet from the door when it opens to free a now-caffeinated patron. The smell of freshly ground coffee drifts toward her like a coyly curled finger, and she stops, breathes, nearly cries. Then lunges for the door before it swings shut.

There’s some electro-folk-alternative something playing behind the hiss and slurp of the espresso machines and the tick-a-tack of computer keys and the mostly-hushed voices.

She grabs two bags of dark roast from the shelf at random and sets them by the register.

“Morning!”

Athi stares at the kid behind the counter. “Hi.” Her voice sounds small and angry, but it’s the only one she’s got so she tries again. “Hi, I need coffee.”

Smooth.

The kid behind the counter stares at her. “Right. Well, good thing you’re here then, huh?”

Yeah, she nods. Thinks she might be scowling.

“You know that the lighter roasts have more caffeine?”

She nudges the bags another inch closer in lieu of a response. “And a quad espresso. Please.”

He shrugs and presses some buttons on his screen while she reaches for her cash.

The cash in her wallet.

Which is in her purse.

Which is hanging under the mirror in the entryway of her apartment.

“Fuck!” she barks, too quickly for her sense of propriety to kick in. The electro-folk-alternative something plays on behind the hiss and slurp of the espresso machines, but the rest of the room goes painfully silent. She rubs at her temples, closes her eyes, searches for options on the inside of her lids. There’s nothing to be done, though. She has to go. Go home, get her purse, come back for the coffee.

She sighs, resigned, but then long fingers slide a black card across the counter, its raised little numbers scraping against the stainless steel.

“Please, allow me.”

That voice. Those fingers. She turns, looks up, and then up a bit more to find his eyes. The lighting is better here, and she decides they’re blue. No, gray. Grayish-blue?

She shakes her head clear, makes to protest but he’s already signing the receipt.

“I . . . but . . . ” she stammers. Solas waits for her to collect her thoughts, but she’s tired and frustrated and can’t seem to manage it.

_Why are you here? Why are you buying my coffee? Why didn’t you come back? Why do I think you should’ve? Why am I being a total ass right now?_

She settles for “why?” and it tumbles out like an accident.

The barista walks over and sets a round, white cup on the wrong end of the bar, having apparently realized she wouldn’t be making it to the right end anytime soon. Athi tries to recall if she’d ever said “for here” or “to go,” while Solas lifts it and holds it out to her. The smooth, tan crema riding up the edges of the ceramic makes for a tantalizing offer, even if she would rather examine his hands for another minute or twenty.

“I . . . mean no offense,” he finally replies, “but you look as though you need it.”

She winces but thanks him and takes the cup in both of her hands, the skin of her fingertips brushing his too briefly. Judging by her sudden inability to breathe properly, she definitely reads more into that than she ought to.

“I don't know if you remember me," he says, as though she could forget. "My name is Solas, and you bought me a drink. I regret to say that I never got _your_ name.”

She sips, savors, swallows, stares. He’s much taller when he’s not sitting. “Athi.”

He tries it out and it flows off his tongue like honey. “Sit with me?” He gestures to a table by the window and turns to collect her—well, _his—_ purchases.

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t, has already proven herself an idiot. But she’s an idiot with a romantic streak the size of Orlais and so she does. Cursing herself and her stupid, foolish heart, she sits. Across from the open laptop, which he closes, puts away, forgets. He looks at her with a face full of questions again, and then she forgets, too.

Three cups of coffee and a cream scone later, her keys are clattering against her apartment door so she can show him the sad splinters of a tiny guitar.


	4. Four

They had fallen together, filled up the spaces in their lives with pieces of each other. It had been quiet. Gradual. Yet somehow, still felt like crashing—a free-fall, fast, reckless, terrifying.

After the coffee shop, he’d twisted the doorknob, then let it spin back into place to ask for her number. She had put it in his phone with a pounding heart and fumbling fingers, and he’d left her lightheaded and waiting for all of six unbearable minutes. Then her phone had chirped, muffled but earnest, from the bottom of her purse (which was hanging under the mirror, in the entryway):

     [  _Hello. This is Solas._ ]

     [  _I have your coffee. Do you work this evening?_ ]

He’d come in that night to deliver her coffee and then claimed a seat at the bar as his own. The one where the counter curves toward the wall. He’d sat and watched, like before, and this time, he had come back.

Sometimes, he’d only drink water with lemon.

A couple weeks later, they had discovered a mutual connection—Varric Tethras—when they met by accident at a party. While the music bumped its endless beat into their skulls they had connected. Commiserated. They’d escaped the noise together. Found a ladder and climbed to the roof, felt the shingles shake beneath them as they told each other made-up stories about the stars.

He had called her late at night, once, his voice thick and drowsy, and she’d kept waiting for a reason. He was out of town, he’d said, a guest presenter at the University of Orlais. She had asked what he did for a living. “I’m a historian,” he’d mumbled into her ear. “I specialize in ancient Elvhen culture, with a focus on the effects of magic on everyday life and the empire as a whole.” She’d felt small against his greatness and unworthy of his attention. Had made some dumb joke, at which he’d roused long enough to say something soothing and sweet. They’d lingered for a while more, the silences between growing longer and longer until she finally heard his soft snoring on the other end.

Not long after that, she’d convinced him to help re-arrange her bedroom furniture. Once the job was done, he had combed through a drawer full of pictures, asking questions about her family, her travels, her life, while she filled a box with things to give away.

And now she stands inside his house, here to fill up an evening with wine and company. When he’d opened the door, he had given her free reign to look around. And there is an awful lot of looking around to do.

His home is steeped in history, filled to the brim with books that seem like they should be dusty and cluttered with bits and pieces of the past. Even the art is far from modern.

Which makes sense, considering.

She can’t help but wonder what he thinks of her place, though, all windows and bare walls. If he likes how much light and space it can hold, and how pretty she’d made the dinette. Or if maybe it tells him how empty she is, like his knick-knacks and paintings and piles of tomes speak to her of his soul.

The house is not large, but it is open. From where she stands in the living room, she can see the entire kitchen, the front door, and half of what was supposed to be a dining room. Instead, it houses a large wooden desk, covered in piles of papers and a strangely patterned sphere.

Her ears twitch at the squeak of cork on glass somewhere behind her and she turns. He’s in the kitchen, wrestling with a bottle of red. She almost offers to help. Almost. But the long sleeves of his henley are pushed into crinkles at the elbows, and the muscles of his forearm convince her to keep quiet. So she watches, just for one sweet moment before his victory sounds with a muted _pop._

On a whim, she detours to his study to scoop up the sphere—it’s much heavier than it appears—on her way to the island between the two spaces. She hops onto the counter separating cabinets from couches and turns the sphere in her palms. Follows the faint and jagged lines that mar its surface, runs her fingers along the deep grooves, the swirls and loops with no pattern.

Well, sort of a pattern. It is oddly reminiscent of a fingerprint.

“That was a lucky find,” he says, nodding to the object as he holds out a stemless glass. “Its previous owner did not know its worth.”

She takes it and thanks him and sips—

_heavy, spicy, berries with a bite_

—then returns her attention to the mysterious object. “What is it?”

“An orb of power. A relic from ancient times.”

All of a sudden, she’s grateful that she didn’t act on the impulse to toss it in the air like a child’s ball. “What was it for?”

He leans against the sink and his head tilts the way it does whenever he starts a story.

“Scholars believe that the powerful among our people used foci such as this one to gather and store magical energy. They could then use that energy to augment their own magic, and cast spells that no ordinary mage could successfully perform. Raise cities, shift the tides of war, even change the state of the world . . . " he looks thoughtful, even sad, for a moment so brief she isn't sure it ever happened. "Assuming those hypotheses are correct, that is.”

She stares at him in incredulity. “And you use it as a paperweight.”

“Yes.” He laughs. “Though when you put it like that, it does seem a bit irreverent.”

“I guess that’s one word for it.” Athi regards the sphere—no, the _orb of power—_ with uncertainty. Perhaps a fair amount of fascination, as well.

“You look worried. It is perfectly safe, I assure you.”

“How do you know?” she asks, a challenge forming. “Have you ever licked it?”

He coughs at the wine he's just swallowed. It takes him a few seconds to recover. “Excuse me?”

“Have you licked it?”

“I can't say that I have, no.”

He’s smiling now. Her own grin slips loose in response, tugs at the corner of her mouth before she can stop it. “Maybe you should.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“To make sure.”

“Of what?”

“That’s it’s safe, of course.”

“Ah.” He gazes at her thoughtfully, then at the orb, then again at her. “Well, give it here, then.”

And the game is on. She slides to the ground, takes three small steps across the tiny kitchen, stops. Then slowly lifts the orb to his face, cradled in her hands.

His eyes, today a deep, dangerous indigo, are full of mirth and fixed on her. As her smile fades, she becomes briefly aware that the joke has turned. That she’s lost control. He leans forward, parts his lips, and her attention flits undecided between eyes and mouth, teasing and taunting.

The tip of his tongue finds one of the grooves and licks up the curve of it, flattening and tapering off again before he pulls away. It’s weird, tense, and—

_fucking hot._

As she pulls the orb back to her chest, he turns, spits into the sink, shakes his head, spits again. Takes a mouthful of wine.

“It is, perhaps, an acquired taste,” he says, screwing up his nose in mild disgust, “but as you can see, perfectly safe.”

She's blushing like an idiot, can feel the blood burning beneath her skin. What in the damn void just happened?

“Out of curiosity, is that how _you_ determine a thing’s safety?”

“Is there any other way? Plus, Sera says that licking also claims it as yours.”

“In that case, I should have done this years ago. It would have saved me a great deal of trouble." Again, where she expects a wink, instead a faraway look too short-lived to read passes across his face. A look that means something, odd and out of place in their empty flirtations.

But he asks his question before she can ask hers. "So would you say that you're possessive, then?"

She grins and the strangeness is forgotten as she returns the magical-artifact-turned-office-supply to its place on his desk. “I might be,” she admits, a hard truth in a playful wrapper. Easy to offer, easy to digest. “Perhaps a bit. Sometimes.”

“Noted.”

They sit outside and watch the world wind down, talking and laughing, teasing and taunting. Slowly draining that bottle of red.

To be honest, she’s surprised they haven’t run out of things to talk about yet, considering how little common ground they’ve discovered. But everything is still new. Everything is a revelation.

He’s gone quiet, she realizes. Staring into the red film at the bottom of his glass like a diviner reading omens from the spirits.

“You seem even more pensive than usual,” she says. “Something on your mind?”

“Yes, actually. And, if you are willing, I could use your advice.”

“Of course. I’m all ears.”

“I . . . Well, I have met someone.”

Her heart drops.

“Oh?” she peers out into the darkening yard, busies herself with the shapes of the garden.

“Yes, and my feelings for her are becoming difficult to ignore.”

 _Try harder,_ she thinks. “Why ignore them in the first place?”

“It is . . . complicated.” She dares to glance as far as his hands. His fingers play on the rim of the glass, like he’s nervous, but she’s not sure why. Perhaps his inner turmoil is in need of an outlet. She’d certainly like to scream right about now.

Has she truly been so stupid? Fooling herself into reading what she wants in his glances, in his actions, in his tone, and ignoring the truth?

She blinks back the threat of tears—

_don’t you dare, Lavellan_

—and waits for him to continue.

“I am not sure I would make a good partner for her,” he finally continues. He twists and tips the glass, coating the inside with the last remnants of wine inside. “Even without delving into my many moral failings, I am not well-known for maintaining healthy relationships.”

“Is anyone?”

“I am also afraid she thinks me too old for her. She is young, spirited, full of life, and I am—”

“Old and decrepit?” She teases, recalling the flex and twist of his muscled forearms. “Oh, I’m sure you have some fire left in you. Somewhere.”

“Thank you, Athi. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“I mean every word.”

He chuckles. “So, do you have any advice for me? I hear bartenders are better than therapists.”

“No, but we’re cheaper.” She had hoped they could slide out of the subject, wants to tell him to take her and forget the rest. But she doesn’t. She folds up her hope and braces her heart and says the other thing. The better thing. “Solas, fear is a terrible reason not to love. You are better than that. And you are worth more than that.”

Then he is quiet again, but the levee threatens to spill over if she so much as looks at him. So she sets her wine glass on the table and abruptly stands. “I should go,” she declares, and it seems too loud in the quiet of the night. “But thank you for the wine, and, um, good luck.”

He stands as well. "Okay . . . sure. Are you—"

"I'm fine, yes. Goodnight, Solas."

"Goodnight?"

It's a question, not an acceptance. Of course it is, because she's upset, and why should she be upset with him? What has he done except show up and stick around?

With Solas in tow, confused but acquiescent, she hurries around the side of the house. She slips on her helmet but can still feel his eyes on her as she straddles the seat and starts up the engine. Fucking creators, she's such a fool. She broke her own heart, and now all of her spaces are tearing open.

A few miles down the road, the levee breaks.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: [kitbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitbug) has all my love for serving as my beta for this chapter and for being generally awesome. ^v^

He calls her that night, and again the next day. She ignores the first and misses the second, but listens to the message over coffee and eggs. He’s gone. Left for Rivain on the first flight out. Some important discovery, he says, then adds a lot of words she’s sure mean something to people like him. Says he’s sorry, too, but she’s not sure what for.

She’s not sure about anything.

So she slips back into her life as it was, her default routine with its simple, steady beat. Wake up. Exist. Pour drinks. Go home. Sleep. Hopefully, somewhere in the middle, get over her stupid crush.

But all there is in the middle is more empty space. Wake up. Exist. Pour drinks. Go home. Sleep. Day after day, she pretends not to notice that his seat is empty. Night after night, she pretends not to care that her phone is dark. The days bleed into one another, nothing but a string of tired existences tied end to end, and she wonders how long it’s been this way. How she’s survived the tedium. Not now, not since, but before he showed up and shook her loose.

Too long, probably.

She needs to move. To change something, do something, _become_ something. But this is what she knows, and this is what she is. And she does it well enough.

So she wakes up. Exists. Pours drinks. Goes home. And sleeps. But she fills the empty spaces between the beats with tiny rebellions. She buys a different brand of mascara and six books she knows she’ll never read, but she might. Rearranges the furniture—again—and redecorates the kitchen. Writes a letter to Deshanna. Throws it away. Fishes it out of the trash and sends it. Gets a tattoo on her ribs of some flowers or something. Requests a night off, a _weekend_ night, and stands her ground when the boss gives her shit about it.

Sera takes her dancing, has been trying to for months. The crowd is overwhelming, but the music is fine so she dances. First with Sera, then with anyone. With a bouncer who does not dance back. With the girl in line for the bathroom. With a cute guy in a navy shirt who looks clueless and moves his hips all wrong. She drinks until the room spins and the streetlights spin. And she asks him, the clueless guy, what he’d do if she threw up on his shoes.

—   —   —

She wakes up in her own bed to the sharp sound of knuckles on wood. Her head aches, her tattoo itches, and her mouth tastes like bad decisions.

_Who? And why?_

She holds her breath in the silence that follows. Like maybe if she doesn’t breathe, whoever-it-is might consider going the fuck away. Unsurprisingly, it does not work. Another set of neat little knocks and she groans, tumbles out of bed, feels around the floor for something like a shirt. Her fingers close on something with buttons. It’ll do.

But then she cracks open the door and finds her heart hasn’t done much healing. Because he’s back, he’s here, he’s in front of her. And she’s entirely undone.

She doesn’t speak. Can't. She stares at him in confusion, or maybe wonder. The line between the two has been blurry since the beginning. Solas glances down at her lack of attire and quickly away, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Good morning,” he finally says, looking more than a little uncertain. Looks tired, too, though she’s hardly one to judge.

“You’re here,” she says, forgetting what he said. “I mean, um, you’re back.”

He smiles. “Yes.”

“When?”

“Well . . . just now, actually. I haven’t quite made it home yet.”

“But you’re here.” That means something, or should. It’s easy to forget he doesn’t love her like that when his face goes soft and bright, all at the same time. Her heart leaps in her chest before she wrestles it back down, hiding the effort by leaning against the door frame. “I’d invite you in, but—.”

“No, no, it’s all right. I’m not quite sure what I expected, to tell you the truth. I only . . .” He gives a great sigh. “I wanted to see you.”

She’s blushing. She’s fucking blushing, she knows it. “So, uh, how was your trip?”

“What? It was good. Fine. It doesn’t matter.”

“It sounded pretty important. I think.”

“Well, yes, it was important work, but that’s not the point,” he says, his voice raising in earnest. It’s very distracting.

When he continues, it’s at a volume closer to normal. “Listen, I tried to tell myself not to come, and if you want me to go, I’ll go. But what we—”

He stops short, lips parted, eyes flicking upward to focus on something past her shoulder. She turns to follow his gaze.

_Shit._

The door to her room is ajar and it all comes rushing back: the spinning streetlights and the taxi at the curb. Clueless guy’s hand under her arm, somewhat better at walking than dancing. The napkin he’d held out, presumably with his number, but she’d grabbed his hand instead. They’d kissed in the cab, in the stairwell, on the couch. In her bed.

And now he’s standing in the hallway, half-dressed, half-awake.

She looks down in horror at the dark blue shirt, easily four sizes too large to be her own. It smells of sweat and cologne, how could she have missed that?

“Oh fuck. Creators, Solas, _fuck,_ I—”

He holds up his hands to stop her. “There’s no need to explain. I apologize for the intrusion; it was rude of me to come unannounced.”

“No, wait—”

“I’ll see you around, Athi.”

The door closes behind him. She smacks her head back against it, squeezes her eyes shut, slides down until her bare ass hits the floorboards.

 _Gross_.

Everything is gross. But she can clean the floor and take a shower and brush the bad decisions from her mouth. What she can’t do is wipe away the shock that had spread across his features. Or the hurt into which it had so quickly shifted. He’d been _hurt_. Her heart says that means something, too. Wants it to mean something. More likely, though, he had simply expected more from her than a drunken lay she’d clearly forgotten. And she had disappointed, like she always does.

A shadow turns her safe, pathetic darkness from a deep red to cool purple.

“That, uh, that wasn’t your boyfriend or anything, right?”

She looks up. He’s still cute, handsome even, despite the bedhead. Broad-shouldered and cut. But he’s not the one she wants. He extends a great big hand and helps her up like she’s nothing. It’s kind of comforting, to be nothing.

“No, that was not my boyfriend.” Athi sighs and twists her lips into a sad excuse for a smile. “Pretty sure the position’s wide open.”

“Well, let me know when you’re taking applications.” His smile is crooked and his eyes are warm, but he’s not the one she wants.

She feels sick, swallows, smiles again anyway. Changes into a T-shirt of her own.

Clueless guy leaves while the coffee is brewing and she's lost in the drip and the smell of it. Lost in her own head.

Lost in the empty space.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: _WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SMUT and more poor decisions!_ I'm truly very sorry that it's not the sexytimes that most of us are here to see... She will not be controlled. Endless thanks to [cathybrokeit12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathybrokeit12/) for lending me her eyes!

It occurs to her that she doesn’t know what love feels like.

Fluttering? Falling? Fading together? Stories make it sound like magic, spouting bullshit about butterflies and fate and long, lingering looks. But everyone says those stories are wrong, that the rush and the romance don't last.

So what's left?

Athi flips it over and over again on the table, this delicate paper that threatens to tear with each slide of her thumb and forefinger. It had been a cocktail napkin once. Before he’d ripped it down to a more manageable size. Before he’d shredded it into a sort of Seheron-shaped scrap and scribbled his numbers onto it. She flips it over and over and over again, one side blank and the other marked with blue ink, smudged but legible.

She should throw it away, one of these days.

Cullen is not the one she wants, but he wants her. He had taken her out the night after she'd called, and had done everything right. A date had turned into dating, one month into three, and he’s good. Kind. Funny, but not when he tries to be. Hers, wholeheartedly. And she doesn't know if she's in love. Sometimes she flutters, other times she fades away. A shell of herself, watching her soul play charades with someone else’s. But love isn't magic, and it can't be perfect because nothing ever is. Who knows, maybe she could want him, too.

Maybe that’s love. Solid. Safe. Subtle.

The thought makes her eyes water and her limbs ache. But her phone chirps and she sees his name on the screen, so she unfolds herself from the couch and puts his number back on the fridge. Pinned behind an everite magnet. She should throw it away, but it’s been up long enough to belong there.

She pulls on her socks, her boots, her jacket. Tugs some cash from her wallet and tucks it into her pocket with her phone, zipping them in by force of habit. Grabs her helmet from the closet in the hall, then leaves and locks her doubt in behind her.

He’s waiting by the sidewalk, V-Twin idling loud and hungry beneath him, and he tilts his head as though she needs an invitation to straddle the seat. He shifts into gear, pulls into traffic, and opens the throttle. _This_ she loves, and it’s all of the above: solid and fluttering, falling but safe.

The right kind of noise.

If two people can build a life on a mutual appreciation for motorcycles, then she has nothing to worry about. His bike is newer than hers. More powerful, more efficient, less broken-and-repaired. Less loved, in her opinion, though he might beg to differ.

She grips him tighter, leather and flesh and bone and _hers,_ and she flutters.

They end up at the farmer’s market, which is quite possibly the most domestic way to spend a Saturday morning. She’s been a few times, though not since she and Sera got kicked out for measuring cucumbers.

Cullen probably won’t want to do that with her.

Hand in great big hand, they wander the rows of green and red and yellow and orange. Everything smells like salad. And dirt. He shakes his head but plays along while she selects the weirdest fruits and vegetables she can find. Even buys them and adds them to the fancy reusable bag he picked up at the entrance. An ass-shaped pear. A bunch of carrots—one with two scraggly tips. A tomato the size of her hand.

When she inevitably breaks into the peaches, he laughs at the juice dripping down her chin. Finds her a napkin. Kisses her still-sticky lips.

“Definitely ripe,” he says, and she’s not sure if he means her or the peaches. She blushes, just in case.

In an hour or so, they make it back to her place and it feels like waking up. The questions, the noise, the not-knowing, all pressing in at once. She doesn’t want to wake up, she wants to flutter, so she leaves the produce in the kitchen and leads him to her room.

She strips off her shirt, then his, and he responds as expected.

Which is to say, voraciously.

He still makes her feel like the best kind of nothing. Paper-thin. Weightless. A tower of sand, she crumbles under his touch, on her waist, her breasts, her neck, her face. But he kneels to kiss her navel and pull down her jeans, and without him looming over her she forgets to not think.

He’s a good man. She stares down at the mess of blonde curls between her hands. A quiet man. A clever man. Less clueless than she’d first thought, under the lights and influence. More handsome. And his hips work just fine. It doesn’t feel dirty or hasty or wrong, even the first time. Not anymore.

Not unless she thinks about—

Cullen’s stubble scratches against her thigh and it's so distinctly him that she almost runs. It's nice, sometimes, that sandpaper skin, when it catches against her hair or he nuzzles it into the curve of her neck. But today it etches guilt into her body and she doesn't know why. She doesn’t want to ask.

He guides her backward until her legs hit the side of the bed. “Lie down,” and she does.

It does not take long before she’s writhing under his touch and his tongue. One arm anchors her here, flung heavy across her middle, fingers splayed and grasping. His other hand, she knows, is between her legs, drawing pleasure from her nerves like notes from an instrument.

She wonders how he got so good at this.

Then she wonders out loud, and he stops, smirks, watches her squirm.

“Practice, I suppose.”

His stubble scrapes again, but she’s worked up and sensitive and it’s not so bad. She comes undone a moment later with his fingers in her cunt, his lips around her clit, his eyes on her face.

The mattress squeaks and bounces when he flops down next to her, wiping his mouth on his arm. Athi turns, a little weak, a little tired, a little quieter, and his face is full of summer and concern.

“Are you all right?”

She smiles—

_No._

—and nods.

Even after this much time, she still hesitates, still has to tell her hands how to touch him. Soft, on his chest. Sharp, on his hip. Then slow. Slow, when she works his buttons loose and pulls down the elastic band of his boxer briefs. He likes it when she teases, drags her fingers up his length and her lips down the line of coarse hair on his belly. She rolls a thumb around the tip, followed by a gentle kiss, and he pulls her hair to one side so he can see.

He always wants to see.

She’s not as good at any of this—as _practiced_ at this—as he is, but then, he’s easier to please. He bites back praises, but looses soft grunts and hitched breaths to urge her on, to keep her lips open and her head bobbing and her tongue interested. When he bucks into her mouth, quick to apologize but still fisting the comforter and the ends of her hair together, she knows he’s close. He comes on her hand, on her tongue, down her throat. Tastes like salt, but he’s sweet. Strong. Safe and solid.

And he tries so hard to see her.

Three months he's been trying, this good, quiet, clever man. Maybe she could love him, whatever that means. Maybe, with time. And practice.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you [kitbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitbug) for taking a look at this chapter for me, and particularly for your help with the dialogue!

The bar always feels strange in the daytime, like someone’s walked in and moved everything an inch to the left. It’s brighter, sort of. The windows few and frosted and just enough to give the illusion of daylight. And it’s usually quiet, but not the peaceful kind. The uncomfortable kind. The kind that makes her wonder if the walls are breathing. The kind that reminds everyone they’re here alone.

Though it’s admittedly less quiet when Sera stops by.

“You’re coming right?”

Athi sets a warm plate full of food on the counter. “Careful, it’s—”

Far too fast for warnings, Sera digs her spoon into the center and shovels steaming hot roast beef and mashed potatoes directly into her mouth. Her eyes fling wide and fill with regret as her hands fan frantically at her mouth.

“—hot. Um, probably.” Athi grabs one of the glasses she just finished buffing and fills it with ice and cool water. “Where? When? With who?”

“Dragon’s Peak, or near enough—gimme that. Roughing it. Not next weekend but the one after.”

“Damn. Seggrit’s going to kill me if I keep taking off weekends.”

Sera looks up, chewing, blinking, waiting.

“I mean yes.”

“Yes!” Sera yells, earning more than a few startled glances. “Knew you'd be down. That just leaves . . .” She turns her entire body to face Varric, who has been actively not-writing for the past hour.

“You can't possibly mean me,” he says.

“Oh, come on.” Athi drops her elbows to the counter, leans forward, bats her eyes. “What sounds better than you and me, stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a tarp, two stakes, and some rope?”

He squints and half-grimaces. “If I didn't know you any better, that'd be some scary shit. I’ll pass, thanks. Not the outdoorsy type, even if I _were_ the get-brutally-murdered-in-the-woods type.”

“Shame,” Sera says, singsong despite her mouthful of food. “Miss Priss and roller-skates are coming, and you know what that means.”

Athi does not, in fact, know what that means. Hasn’t been here long enough for all the goddamn nicknames to stick, but the corners of Varric’s mouth twitch.

“Well, maybe I’ll find some time to stop by,” he says. “But I’m not sleeping out there, no matter how intriguingly creepy the offer.”

Sera snorts. “Fine by me! Just keep us up all night with your messy breathing, anyway.”

“Hey, if you couldn’t hear me breathing, you wouldn’t know if I’d stopped.”

He earns a choked cackle from Sera and many of the startled glances return, more irritated than before. Then the doors to the back of house swing open and Seggrit stalks through, hissing vicious whispers into his phone. He doesn’t even look at Athi, but on his way out the door, he waggles his fingers at her. An unintelligible gesture that probably means “stop fucking around and work,” because whatever she’s doing, that’s all he ever says.

Seggrit is a bit of an asshole.

Still, he hired her with almost no experience. So she plays grateful, pushes off the counter and pulls out supplies. Limes, lemons, oranges. A chef’s knife and a paring knife from the magnetic strip by the sink. A long wooden cutting board, used and washed and generously scored. A stack of square metal bins, made to fit in ice-chilled slots behind the bar.

She washes her hands in water that turns her skin pink. Even uses the brush to scrub underneath her fingernails, barely-there as they are. Then she selects a lime and gently squeezes. The smooth, slightly pitted citrus skin gives; probably juicy, best for wedges. She puts it in a new pile and chooses another.

“Hey,” calls Sera, “I gotta get back. Thanks for food! And another hey, tell Cully-Wully we’re camping, would you? Think he hates me . . .”

“He doesn’t—” she tries, but the door’s already on the backswing. Likely for the best, not to have to explain his reasons. Though maybe someday she’ll tell Sera how many times she’s been an unwilling excuse to turn down date night.

Varric, on the other hand, won’t be running out on her anytime soon. He’s earned his own seat with a month’s worth of warming and what he calls writing.

He sets down his pen, not that he’s used it yet. “How's that going, by the way?”

“Cullen? Um, it’s—”

_suffocating_

“—good.”

“Good?”

Athi shrugs and sorts her limes.

“Come on, you’ve gotta give me _something_.”

She gives him the finger and a bright, shiny smile.

“Pretty hostile for a woman in love,” and he squints like he knows she might not be.

Varric cares too much, only wants people to be whole and happy and well but he can’t fix her. And she doesn’t want to talk about it. Not here, not now, not to him, not at all. Besides, when she talks she cries, and if she cries at work she’ll never come back.

So she gestures to his notepad. “How’s _that_ going?”

He barely even hears her. “I’m worried about you, kid. You don’t seem as _you_ and, well, you haven’t brought him around. I never see him visit you, you never really talk about him. And I thought you and Chuckles were thick as thieves, so I went and asked him about the guy. Then I find out you haven’t spoken in months.”

_Solas._

“Listen, I appreciate the concern, it’s sweet, but I’m fine. Really. So quit stalling and write your damn book already.”

He looks like he’s going to push it, then stops, frowns, and goes back to his paper and pen.

 _Solas._ Her head and heart are spinning. They’d talked about her. Solas had talked about her, and she can’t help but wonder what else he had said. What he’d thought. If he’d said her name like that day in the coffee shop. _Athi_ , like honey, or if he’d spit it out like stale bread.

The thought makes her stomach churn and her hands shake. And it shouldn’t. She sets down the knife and picks up her phone.

Cullen probably won’t be able to go. He did just get that promotion, and his work is important. He might not even want to.

   [ _how do you feel about camping?_  ]

She puts it away, but he texts back before she makes it to the sink. He’s interested, and she should be glad but she’s not. Maybe it’s her, maybe something is wrong in her head or her soul or her childhood and now her love doesn’t work right. Maybe she’s just an asshole who’s better at being alone because it’s definitely not him. He’s good, and she’s—

_a fuck-up; a mess_

—a little broken. She had wanted to be better, but she isn’t. Honestly, maybe she should do them both a favor and end this farce right now.

Except . . .

Except she just invited him into the wilderness for tent sex and s’mores.

Why does she only ever think about ending it when she can’t? When he’s just made dinner, or fucked her in the shower, or introduced her to his mother? Or been invited camping? She sighs, sends him the when and where of it and hopes her disappointment is faulty wiring and a bad day.

The door opens, so she washes her hands again. Still shaky. But they’re steady enough for a gin and tonic, a glass of water, a generous tip. Steady enough for a knife, and she goes back to her slices of lime.

Solas might be there, if Varric goes. She doesn’t want to hope, doesn’t want to want him there, doesn’t want to be upset when he’s not. But if he is, and if he wants, they could be friends again. He could sit in his seat at the curve of the bar and drink whiskey or water with lemon. She could finally give in, finally call him. Could let her thumb press down on his name and then wait for him to answer. It wouldn’t be like before, she tells herself, not like last time. She’s with someone—a good man who she trusts and respects and maybe loves. Her heart won’t break when he says that his is elsewhere.

She looks down.

A bin full of citrus and a head full of hope. She holds her hand above the counter, straight and still and steady enough to scare her.


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: [kitbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitbug) you are a blessing, the light of my life, the cheese to my pizza, the crisp to my bacon. Thanks for beta-ing!!

They drive out to Dragon’s Peak on Friday morning. Early, and she sleeps the whole way, waking up when the car slows to find the mountains filling the windows and Cullen’s hand resting on her knee. They weave through the campsites. Most are unoccupied, but it’s nice not to have neighbors when there are no walls. After a while, Sera’s car comes into view, a round yellow rusted thing surrounded by more empty campsites and the color green. They park at the next site over, get out, and stretch their legs.

It’s beautiful. The trees here are limbless for the first twenty feet, all dark wood and wonder, reaching invariably for the bright blue that peeks in between them. A tiny packed-dirt path between the sites leads through the edge of the woods, down to a wooden dock and a small sandy beach.

Athi pulls out a french press, sets up the camp stove, and helps Cullen with the tent until the water boils.

Sera finally shows, emerging from the woods with a roll of toilet paper and a bottle of sanitizer, and Athi pours her a cup. Then the three of them sit, quiet on the dock. Coffee in their hands and the wind in their hair and their toes in the water, soaking up too much sun.

Leliana, Josie, and Cassandra show up first. They come prepared with towels and suits and Leliana brings a raft made for lounging.

Bull, on the other hand, brings his new boyfriend. He’s one of those guys who are handsome enough to kick the wind right out of a perfectly healthy set of lungs. He’s funny and clever, with charisma coming out his ears.

And he insists that Cullen join them for a hike.

“So, frat-boy came after all,” Sera says when they’re gone. “That’s good, right?”

“He didn’t go to university.”

“Like that’s the point.” She kicks out her legs, inspecting their color as the water drips down, then grabs the sunscreen from behind her. “Blonde. Beefy. Boring. Frat-boy!”

“How would you know if he’s boring?”

“Is he?”

“He runs into burning buildings to _save_ people for a living, how could that possibly be boring?”

Sera bumps her shoulder, cherry blossom streaked with white, into Athi’s. “That’s not a real answer.”

“Fine, he’s not boring!”

“If you say so. Ah, shite. Got too much of this mess. Take some?”

They swim and sit and float and play, jeans and sundresses stuffed into bags, abandoned on the beach, draped over the dock. Athi goads Cass into a race to the floating island, and then loses by more than a hair. The sun trades places, east to west, and suddenly the day is gone.

Athi pulls herself onto the dock and wriggles back into her jeans. Finds her tank top on Sera’s shoes, and twists her hair up to keep the lake water off her back. When she offers to go back to camp for drinks, the response is more than enthusiastic.

To be perfectly honest, she thinks, it’d be nice if someone _else_ would fetch the drinks for a change.

Back at the camp, Varric is crouched next to a rather pathetic excuse for a fire.

“Please tell me you’re not cooking,” she says.

“Oh, I’m not. Though I’d like to think I could rise to the occasion and warm up some hot dogs. You know, if the people needed me.”

A trunk slams shut, and she startles. “Thankfully, the people do not, or they would likely all starve.”

Solas walks toward her—no not _her_ , just the campsite. But when she catches the flick of his eyes down her form, her heart still does an uncomfortable flip-flop inside of her ribs.

 _No,_ she tells it. _No, keep it together._

But creators, she must be a mess. Rolled-up jeans, no makeup, no shoes, swim top soaking through her shirt, and a hasty bun. Probably fried and frizzy. Come to think of it, she’s not even sure she’s looked in a mirror yet today. Not that it matters, of course.

Then there’s Solas. Sharp features and ocean eyes. Somehow immaculate, despite the heat, in cuffed tan shorts and an easy olive v-neck. He’d worn it to that party, all those months ago. And it’s half tucked in over the bone of his hip, not that she dwells on it.

And he’s here.

Not that she cares.

He opens a cooler by a small blue tent. Comes back with three beers and a bottle opener, and he holds one out to her. It’s ice-cold and dripping. Off the bottle, into her hand, leaving cool wet tracks down her forearm.

“Hey,” she says softly. For such a small word, it comes out awfully shaky.

“Hello.” His smile, too, is an uncertain little thing, hanging crooked on his mouth like a—

Not that she’s looking at his—

_Oh, hell._

She tears her eyes away, resting them instead on Varric’s dying fire. “Do you want some help with that?” she offers.

“You know, I thought you’d never ask.”

Setting her bottle beside her, she uses the end of a piece of firewood to push his blackened sticks to the center of the pit, extinguishing whatever flames had managed to survive his efforts. Then she lays it in the ashes next to the pile. More logs, arranged crosswise, more kindling in the middle, and a burning match sets it freshly alight.

“Hey, Solas! Glad you made it, buddy!” Even coming from the edge of the campsite, Bull’s voice booms in her ears. Cullen and Dorian trail a ways behind him, talking like old friends.

“You know each other?” she asks.

“Sort of, yeah!” he claps Solas on the back. “I was on the squad for some big deal history thing a couple months back, and he was there, and we got to talking.”

Solas laughs softly. “As I recall, you asked if my companion was single.”

A log slips free of her grasp and clangs against the heavy metal fire guard, but no one seems to notice _._

“Mmm. Yeah, I remember,” Bull says. “Redhead. Good times! Anyway, we’ve hung out a few times since then.”

Varric leans over. “I’ve tried to get in on it, but so far, no luck. Whatever they get up to, it’s gotta be good.”

“Oh, it’s good.” Bull waggles his eyebrows, but Solas only grins, tips his bottle up, and drinks.

“So this is where you went!”

Cassandra, walking up the path from the lake with the others, has her “you’re in trouble” face on. Brows knit tight, eyes fierce, voice shrill, and Athi can’t help but wonder if this is what it feels like to be accused of murder.

But Varric’s gravelly voice cuts in before she can ask for a lawyer. “Hey, Seeker! Fancy meeting you here.”

The look Cassandra gives him is withering. “Oh, it’s _you_. I suppose I should have known.”

“Sorry, I was”—Athi gestures to the now-healthy fire—“waylaid.”

Varric laughs. “Taken captive by my charming vulnerability, she means.”

“Charming!” Cass rolls her eyes. “That seems unlikely.”

Dorian swoops in like the guest of honor, rather than somebody’s plus-one. “Well, this has been a delightful little tete-a-tete,” he says, “but might I suggest we consider our supper? I’m not sure about the rest of you lot, but the three of us did just climb a mountain.”

“Well, not the whole thing,” Cullen admits, and is quickly shushed by Dorian.

She lets the fire die a bit, and over the embers they cobble together a meal: Bull grills the veggie kebabs he’s had marinating, Sera roasts up some corn, Leliana tucks potatoes wrapped in tin foil into the warm ashes, and Cullen cooks the chicken they brought on hot-dog skewers.

They make a weird bunch, she thinks as they eat and talk and laugh and tease and argue. Humans and elves, a qunari, a dwarf. Different homelands, different jobs. With the exception of Leliana, who’s known Josie since high school and Cass since college, all the connections between them are thin. Sera had done a couple of Leliana’s tattoos. Varric was (briefly) a suspect in one of Cassandra’s investigations. Cullen and Dorian hadn’t even met before this afternoon. Yet those bonds were struck and somehow held fast in an instant.

It’s difficult to tell where she fits. What gap she fills, what role she plays, but then Bull tells the one about the time she took him shopping, and she decides it doesn’t matter. So long as she fits at all.

Seconds and thirds, then Bull stands and pulls a handful of cigars from his shirt pocket. “Anyone want to go down to the dock? Genuine Seherons, been looking forward to these babies. Dorian? Cass?”

“Thank you, but no.” Dorian grimaces. “I don’t smoke. Besides, I’d like to wear these clothes again someday, and removing the stench of ‘campfire’ should prove troublesome enough.”

“I’ll join you,” says Cass.

Cullen goes as well, leaves her with a warm smile. She hadn’t expected him to be so interested in socializing. At home, he always seemed content when it was just the two of them. She’d been worried about him, thought he’d feel out of place or something, but it was needless. He has charmed all her friends just by being his polite, well-spoken, surprisingly funny self.

“Surprised you let her out of your sight,” Sera says, throwing a piece of onion across the fire at Varric.

He bats it away like he’s done this before. Knowing Sera, he probably has. “I’m just giving her a chance to miss me, that’s all.”

Everyone seems finished, fed and happy. Instinctively, Athi starts to clean up. Collects the trash and plastic plates, the empty bottles, then goes for water, but Solas is already elbows-deep in suds. He tells her to sit with the others; instead, she picks up a towel and dries. Feels good to have her hands busy. Feels better to be near—

_No._

Josephine gasps. “Oh, Leliana, we never set up our tent!”

“Now is as good a time as any, don’t you think?”

“I think that depends,” Josie says. “Do you know what you’re doing? I’ve never actually done this before.”

“Well, I shall volunteer my services, as I neither prepared dinner nor cleaned up after it.” Dorian nods gratefully toward her and Solas. “Luckily for you, I’m a natural at pointing a flashlight.”

The three of them disappear into the darkness, chattering away.

After the dishes are done and the trash packed away, she adds another log to the fire. Another hour or so of Sera fixating on the marshmallows nobody brought, and Varric smacks his palms to his thighs.

“All right, I think it’s about time for me to head out,” he says. “That actual, sheltered, _comfortable_ bed is calling my name.”

“Really?” Athi teases. “And the night’s so young. I’d have thought you had more life left in you than that.”

“Not all of us want to have the same special loathe-hate relationship with mornings that you have, early bird.”

Solas chuckles. “You’ve noticed this as well?”

“Yeah, I made the mistake of calling for a favor at a perfectly reasonable time of day—”

“Reasonable for who, exactly?” she protests.

“—And she picked up, swore colorfully at me in I believe no less than three different languages, and disconnected.”

“Oh, please. That’s nothing,” Sera says with a scoff. “She shattered my guitar!”

“I apologized for that.”

“Can’t play an ‘I’m sorry,’ now can I?”

Athi groans. “Just go, Varric. Go to your mattress and mini-bar and room service. And take your slander with you.”

“It’s only slander if it’s not true,” he says, and walks away with a casual wave of his wrist.

Sera yawns. “Think I’ll turn in, too.”

_Seriously?_

If Sera leaves, she’ll be alone with him. Really alone. And if they’re alone, he’ll almost certainly look at her at some point, and her heart will do that thing it always does and is not supposed to. Athi pleads with her eyes, begs her to stay, but Sera doesn't notice. Or pretends not to notice. She walks behind the canvas chairs and plants a kiss atop Athi’s head with an exaggerated smacking sound.

“Be good!” And she slips into her tent.

Athi briefly considers following their lead, then remembers it’s been all of five minutes since she essentially declared herself wide awake.

“I suppose you’re the next to fall,” she says to fill the silence, hoping he is.

Hoping he isn’t.

“I could not abandon you so easily.”

Seven words, and she melts. It’s not fair, how quickly he breaks her down, leaves her bare. It's not right. His nearness is intoxicating, their solitude is terrifying, and she’s stuck somewhere between the fear and the falling. Safe, though, like he’s the solid ground. Searching, and he's an answer. Brimful, satiated. Like she’s been trying to breathe underwater, and he’s the air above its surface.

Like she's a foolish, stupid girl with a foolish, stupid heart.

He’s abandoned her once already, practically ghosted her after that stupid fucking morning. Not that she could blame him; she’d disappeared too. And _Cullen—_

As if summoned by her guilt, his laughter drifts up from the dock. If she blocks out some light from the fire, she can see him from here—just a shadow among shadows.

“He seems nice,” Solas says, and stares intently through the flames like he can see what she does.

“He is.”

“And you’re happy?”

 _Yes_ , she tries to say. It sticks in her throat. Instead says, “He’s a good guy,” as if that were enough.

But he accepts it, nods and leans forward to add another piece of wood to the fire. It shifts, and sparks go flying. Some disappear into the dirt around her bare brown feet, some float into the air and mix with the stars.

“Before the world was changed and much of history concealed, magic came to some as easily as breathing.” His voice, much like a hearty red wine, goes straight to her head, and its cadence makes her giddy. “A fire could be summoned or extinguished with a thought; without need for wood or matches to ignite it. Many feared such power, and locked mages away to prevent what they might someday do.”

He settles back into it so quickly, so unexpectedly, that it takes her breath away. On the rooftop at Varric’s with the music thundering underneath them—that’s when the stories had started. She’d matched his rhythm, once, and the counts of the syllables. Trying to see if he noticed. Trying to provoke him. She’d wanted to see what his ruffled feathers looked like. But he hadn’t missed a beat, only looked at her like she was all that existed, and begun another story.

Athi tucks her feet underneath her and watches the smoke curl up into the ink-black sky. Carefully, she considers her story and patiently, he waits. When she’s ready, she begins.

“The Dalish have some stories still, of spells that sunk into the earth and made the forest twist and grow around them. A secret gift from silent gods to keep the world from chaos, for nature has a way of running wild. So they kept it to themselves, passed down from every Keeper to their First.”

“Very good.” His voice wears a smile and a hint of pride. “I’d hoped you had not forgotten.”

“It’s your turn,” she says, still looking up. Of course she hadn’t forgotten.

“You are right. Give me a moment.”

Feeling indulgent, she lets her eyes rove his face. The glow of the fire on the rise of his cheeks, the focused calm, the cut of his jaw.

“At night, when people slept, they’d dream—but not the empty flailings of a restless mind devoid of stimulation. They visited the Fade, a realm of spirits who reflected expectations, memories, even desires. Waking and sleeping, each world shaped and reflected the other.”

She grows too content, watches him for a split second too long, and it bubbles up in her chest before she can stop it. “I’ve missed you,” and it feels good. Feels honest.

His eyes shift to meet hers, the calm replaced by something soft, surprised, sorrowful.

“And I’ve missed you.”

Her heart beats wildly against her ribcage. She doesn’t know where to go from here, but then sees a head of yellow curls and the kindest face she’s ever kissed, and Cullen walks up to stand behind her. His hands on her shoulders, he leans down to whisper in her ear.

“Come to bed?”

She wants to say no, wants to stay, but she shouldn’t. She’s lost enough ground already. So she nods, takes his hand, and fills her smile with an apology.

“Goodnight, Solas.”

He smiles back, sort of.

Back in their tent with a flashlight hanging overhead, she roots around the bottom of her bag. “Hey Cullen? Is my toothbrush in with your stuff?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I’ll check when I get back.”

“Back? What happened to bed?”

“Yes, back. I need to go use . . . well, a tree.” He kisses her on the forehead and rustles off into the darkness.

Athi changes out of her jeans and her tank top and sits there in the mostly-dark, watching the target-shaped circle of light sway slightly over the blankets. Then she grabs his backpack and starts looking.

It’s not in with his toiletries, or buried under his clothes. Last, she checks the side pockets, and her fingers brush something smooth and hard and suspiciously shaped.

Her gut says _leave it_ , but she pulls it out anyway. Just to look, so she won’t wonder. It’s a small square box with rounded edges, black and sleek and velvet, but there’s no way it is what she thinks it is. Still, she flips back the lid. Just to check, so she won’t worry.

Inside is a delicate silver-colored ring, engraved vines climbing toward a deep blue stone. Inside the band, a tiny engraving: _everlasting._

The tent zips open again.

“Any luck? Maybe you . . .” he trails off when he sees what she holds in her hand.

“Cullen, what the hell is this?”


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: you know, when i made the last chapter a cliffhanger, i meant to give y'all another update in like... a couple weeks. So . . . . . . . that clearly went well for all of us. :D Love and thanks to [kitbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitbug) for looking this over for me!

Cullen stares at her open palm.

“That’s none of your business.”

“None of my business?” She laughs mirthlessly. “Uh, unless you’ve got another girlfriend stashed somewhere, I damn well think it is my business _._ ”

He snatches the box from her hand, snaps it shut with a heavy click, tosses it in with his things.

“Let it go,” he says.

“Right. Sure. Let’s forget about the _engagement ring_ you had wrapped up in your boxers. Let’s just not talk about _that_.”

“Why not? We can put it with all the other things we don’t talk about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You never want to talk about it.”

“About what?”

“About anything! About us, and this, where it’s going, if you’re happy . . . Every time I try, you shut down or deflect the conversation. You give me _nothing_.”

“So, what, you bought a ring just to make me talk about it?”

He feigns defeat, looks away like he’s got nothing, then swings back. “Actually, I didn’t.”

“Oh gods, tell me this isn’t like, your grandmother’s ring or something.”

He folds his arms in front of his chest like a shield, and does not answer.

“Fuck. _Fuck,_ Cullen, you can’t just shove this into the fast lane! I don’t even know if I want—”

Cullen’s eyes narrow and go a little cold as she cuts herself off. “Care to finish that sentence?”

“Stop turning this around on me, it’s not _about_ me.”

“That’s funny. See, because you always make it about you. Even this, which really, truly is not about you . . . you've made about you.” Even this close to a whisper, his words cut like a blade, sharp and pointed and made to hurt.

“Fine, then. By all means, enlighten me. What's this about?”

He closes his eyes, inhales slow, exhales through pursed lips.

“I’ve been waiting,” he finally says. Softly, and after all his harshness, it feels like a trap. “Pretty damn patiently, I think, for you to give me something. Anything. Some part of you. Something real, some . . . I don’t know, indication that you want this. Want me.”

“It’s a pretty big jump to—”

“Maker’s balls, woman. I’m trying to be honest, here. Could you quit talking at me for a damn second?”

She snaps her jaw shut.

“I’m sorry, just—” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “What do you want? Because I can’t figure it out to save my life. You didn’t have to call me, but you did. You didn’t have to stay with me, but you did. Now we’re together, playing the happy couple, but there's nothing substantial about it. I thought this”—he gestures around the tent walls—”was something. Your family’s far away, I understand that, and I didn’t want to rush you. But meeting your friends? That’s something.”

He fishes the velvet box out from his pile of clothes, thumb rubbing against the lid but he doesn’t open it. “This was . . . this belonged to someone else. She loved me, and she said yes, and we planned our life together. And then she died. A few weeks before our wedding.”

It comes out of nowhere, this revelation. Feels like a sucker punch, and she’s reeling.

“Creators, Cullen.”

“I tried to sell it, but couldn’t imagine it on someone else’s hand. Her parents wouldn’t take it. So I figured I’d hold onto it until maybe I could let it go. Then some years passed, and I healed, and then you came along and . . . ” He shrugs. “Anyway, I thought this was something.”

Her stomach sinks. “You were going to let it go.”

All of her words—her assumptions, her accusations, her almost-admissions—still hang in the air, a deafening miasma that burns when she breathes it back in.

“Clearly, I was mistaken.” He drops the box back in his bag with his shirts and socks and deodorant. “Because even the  _idea_ of someday—maybe—spending your life with me is apparently terrifying to you. So thank you. Thanks for giving me such a firm reminder that we’re going absolutely nowhere.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Would it change anything if you had?” Cullen shakes his head, and a slew of emotions flicker across his face like slides of an old film. “I am not a man who settles for half-measures, Athi. And I am tired of this one. So tell me: what do you want?”

Her mouth falls open, but she has no answer for him.

“No, you know what?” His voice is icy now, his gaze unyielding steel. “It doesn’t matter. What you want doesn’t matter. Because I’m done.”

Athi chokes back _something—_ not a sob, not really—and he kneels to pack his things. He’s neat, tidy, and there isn’t much to gather; it doesn’t take him more than a minute.

“I’m so sorry, Cullen. I _tried_ to—”

“You tried.” He laughs, cold and harsh. “Tried, what, to love me?”

The shame burns all the way to the tips of her ears. It sounds stupid, said out loud. Said like that. She cries, then, but it feels like begging and she scrubs the wet from her face with the back of her hand.

He hoists his bag onto his shoulder. Looks around the emptier tent. “Kind of wish you hadn’t.”

She stares at the shifting circle of light as he leaves her. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t draw it out. Shoves past her, slams the car door, and drives away hating her.

The smoke from off her skin stings her eyes.

When the sound of his engine fades into cricket mating calls and a crackling fire, she grabs a bottle of something from the stash by Sera’s tent and takes it to the lake. Doesn’t look at Solas, though she sees him, illuminated, from the corner of her eye. He very likely heard the whole damn thing, which is—

_just fucking perfect_

—unfortunate. Knees hugged close, she drinks too-sweet rum by the water like a godsdamned pirate, and she cries and she drinks and she plays back all those months. All those half-truths. All those excuses. All those choices she got wrong. All those things she shouldn’t have said before he left, and all the things she should have.

She cries and she drinks and she thinks and she feels.

Sick. Empty. Guilty. Lonely. Foolish. Frightened.

_Free._

—   —   —

“Hey.”

Sera’s voice brings the sun in with it. Cruel and sudden, a flash of red on the backs of her eyelids, and Athi groans. She doesn’t remember coming back to her tent, or really much of anything past a quarter-bottle. Something hovers just out of reach, faint and wavering, and the harder she tries, the less certain it feels. Something about her head tipped back, watching the stars below the water from upside down.

And . . . space fish?

She lets it go, for now. The sharp pain gripping her skull makes remembering seem a lot less important.

“You okay?” Sera asks. “Need anything?”

“Fuck off,” she says into her pillow.

Sera sighs, sounds like the sweet spot of the scissors catching on wrapping paper. One long clean cut. “Don’t be an assface,” she says.

Athi huffs, and it hurts. “Thirsty.”

“Behind you.”

She turns, no small effort, and peeks one eye open. That hurts, too. Sure enough, though, there’s a clear plastic bottle, half-hidden by the blanket she’d thrown off at some point. Impressed by her own forethought, she gulps down half its tepid contents and caps it tight.

A rustling sound, and then a warm body presses in close behind her, arm tight around her middle and a raspberry blown on the back of her neck. She flinches away from the unexpected contact, but Sera gathers her back in.

“Sera what the—”

“I’m being here, stupid. For you.”

“For me.”

“But Cullen’s the stupid one, you know. For leaving. You’re a catch, and the fish are in the sea, and all that.”

“Um. Thanks.”

 _Fucking void._ They hadn’t been that loud, she didn’t think . . . but Solas had been _right there_.

She really hadn’t pegged him as the type to run his mouth.

Athi shifts in Sera’s arms. Rolls her neck with a series of cracks that sound a hell of a lot more satisfying than they are. Straightens her spine, curls up tighter. Then she gives in to the discomfort with a whimper. Everything hurts.

“What if I wanted to be the big spoon?” she grumbles.

“Psh, you’re teeny. Got to be big for that . . .”

 _Got to be big._ It’s fading fast, fraying at the edges, flashes of moving horizontal under the trees. And something about her father? But again, the memory unravels even as she grasps at it, until she’s not sure she remembers it at all.

“Might make a decent backpack, though,” Sera continues. “Now shut up and sleep while I still can.”

Sleep she can do. So they doze until it gets too hot, sun on canvas and bodies and blankets.

The second waking is almost worse. Sera goes looking for lunch while Athi changes. It's slow going; her muscles are stiff and sore, and _this is why she doesn’t drink rum_. If it weren't so stifling, she’d consider never leaving. Never facing what Solas does or does not know, shared or did not share. Never telling them why she’s alone.

A person can go more than three weeks without food. What’s one day?

But her teeth feel gritty and her stomach grumbles and the heat makes her head pound and she has to face them eventually. So she forces her chin up and emerges into the light.

They’re scattered around the cluster of campsites, all of her friends and their faces full of pity. Except Leliana, who sets her hands on Athi’s shoulders and offers to murder him.

She may or may not be kidding.

“So, Cullen really just . . . left?” Josie says gently. “Are you certain it’s over? Perhaps there was a misunderstanding.”

Cassandra answers for her. “It does not sound that way, Josephine. _Ugh_ , and he seemed so honorable.”

“Do you want me to write him into my book?” offers Varric. “I think there’s room for one more dastardly villain.”

Dorian _tsk_ s him. “He is, at best, a lowly scoundrel. By the by, is there perchance any room for a handsome, yet also quite brilliant hero?”

Everyone’s around except Solas, and Athi’s not sure if she’s relieved or annoyed. By his absence, by their attention, by everything and anything and nothing at all. By the gnawing in her gut as they crucify Cullen’s character, and she as she lets them, using their distraction to sidle away unnoticed.

The table is spread with food, chips and bread and meats and cheeses, fruit, a tray of brownies and crumbs, but it might as well be empty. None of it looks appetizing. She settles for an apple, yellow-green and freckled with brown. Supposedly, they’re almost as good for energy as coffee, which sounds like a load of halla shit.

Feels better in her mouth, though. Less like earth, more like air.

She sits, hunched over the table, and carves off slices with a knife, focused in on the shapes of crisp white flesh rimmed in gold.

Bull steps over the bench, holding a sandwich the size of his face on a comically small plate.

“Scoot.”

She does, and he sits, and the table wobbles backward.

“Sure, make me look selfish,” she says, and can't work out how he's planning to fit it in his mouth.

He doesn't try, though.

“You know, I didn't really like the guy much anyway,” he says, more to the sandwich than to her.

“It wasn't him,” she admits with a sigh. Then, because Bull has that way of getting more information than he asks for, adds: “I think I was an ass.”

“Oh yeah? Good, because I was lying.”

She laughs, just a single outward breath, but it feels good. Her head, on the other hand . . .

The apple’s too much; she leaves it to brown and buries her head in her folded arms. A reprieve from all the brightness and a satisfying stretch along her back.

Bull lays one huge, heavy hand over the ache of it. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I really, really don't.”

The pad of his thumb presses into her skin, digs a broad line along the curve of her neck and rubs small circles into the knot he finds where her neck meets her shoulder. He increases the pressure and she grimaces as he bores in toward her bones, but then he slides it away down her spine, and a guttural, broken moan escapes her.

His hand doesn’t stop, even as she tenses at the primal sound.

“Uh . . . do you want to talk about _that?_ ” he teases.

Athi giggles despite herself. Then freezes, feeling a different sort of twisting in her gut.

Her stomach lurches, threatening, and she tumbles back over the bench, runs to the woods. Waits, focused on the fresh air in her lungs, anchored by her hand on the rough bark of a tree, trying to ease her churning insides back from their precarious ledge.

But it’s no use; she empties the meager contents of her stomach into the weeds.

She deeply regrets the apple.

A rustle ahead and she glances up, pressing the back of one hand to her mouth. It’s Solas, because of course it is, eyes shifting uncomfortably toward her, then away, then back. She’s not sure if she’d rather use her last dregs of effort to glare at him or compose herself.

“Oh. Hello. I was just—” he points back the way he came with a thumb over his shoulder, which means less than he apparently thinks it does. “I did not realize you were awake.”

There is no room in her head for witty one-liners. It’s all _don’t throw up_ , so she only answers: “Yep.”

“Well, are you . . . Is there anything I can do?”

“No, you”—she stops to take a slow breath, deep and even, don’t throw up, _don’t throw up_ —“you’ve done enough.”

“Excuse me?”

“Everyone knows, Solas. About me and Cullen. I can’t believe that you—” Another wave of nausea hits, and she leans her forehead against the young bark. “That was _private_.”

A long silence from him, followed by a heavy sigh. She’s not in the mood to argue anyway, just spits into the grass, turns away with a dismissive wave.

“Athi, I—”

“Gotta go,” she tosses back.

_Brush my teeth._

_For, like, an hour._

The rest of the day flies by.

She bums some coffee off of Varric, which helps immensely with her headache. Then she packs up Cullen’s tent, moves all her stuff into Sera’s, goes swimming, again, and again gets too much sun.

Solas does not approach her, even after her head stops hurting and she wishes maybe he would. And when he does speak, there’s nothing apologetic about it. Just a snappy remark across the fire, over some joke about an ancient ritual.

“I am pleased to hear the Dalish have recalled its existence, even if only for the sake of crude remarks.”

It surprises her, the bite of his words. The myriad accusations behind them. The arrogance in his voice and the hard, angry look in his eyes.

“What, am I not appropriately respectful enough for you, Solas? Too casual with my own people’s culture?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Well. So sorry to disappoint,” she says, words dripping with the opposite.

Varric, bless him, swiftly recovers the mood, but Solas remains aloof until he retreats to bed after dinner.

 _Good riddance, then,_ she tells herself and stays up with the others. Playing cards by the lantern light and trying to keep her eyes on her hand and off his little blue tent. Trying not to think of the way he looked at her last night. Trying not to think about him at all.

—   —   —

He’s gone when she wakes up. No little blue tent, no rust-eaten sedan, no goodbye.

Not that she was really expecting one.

The others are packing up as well; all except Sera, who’s wandering around looking just as dazed as Athi feels.

Varric, bless him twice, left the last of his coffee behind him. It’s good stuff, too, if a bit lighter than she’d like, and she and Sera sit and sip it on the dock in the late-morning quiet.

Toes in the water, but this time there’s no wind. The lake is placid, mirror-like, peaceful. She’ll miss it when she’s gone.

“So,” Sera says, “that Solas is an interesting one, yeah? Lots of talk about old elves and stuff.”

“Lots of talk about a lot of things.”

“Yeah. Wait, what?”

“Forget it.”

Athi takes a long draw of coffee, just barely on the near side of too hot.

“I mean,” she continues, “it was _none_ of his business.”

“Right. Still what?”

“Cullen! He heard us fight, and then told everyone! I mean, what the hell?”

Sera stiffens, stares into the sky with her face twisted all funny. “Yeah,” she says. “Right. What the hell, him.”

“Sera.”

“Mhm,” she says into her mug.

_“Sera.”_

“Okay! Okay. It was me.”

“Sera!”

“Oh come on, it’s not like they weren’t going to notice his fancy wheels had up and rolled off! I was just . . . preparing the room, is all.”

“And who told you?”

“What, like I can’t work it out for myself?”

“Did you?”

“Well I _could_ have.”

“Sera,” Athi sets down her mug, like somehow that means she’s serious. “ _What did he say?_ ”

“ _Ugh_ , fine. Elfy told me that Cullen left, and you had gotten wasted, but he didn’t say wasted, he said something all fancy. Think he used the word ‘imbibed.’ Said you might be confused about where you were, and he asked me to check on you.”

“And that’s when you told everyone else.”

“More or less,” Sera mumbles.

Athi shakes her head, hard, and something clicks.

A soothing voice— _“Are you all right?”_ —as the sky rippled above her. Her feet, swept sideways as he lifted her in his arms. The bottle of water he had placed next to her bed, tucked in with a reminder to drink it in the morning. Those unraveled pieces, pulled back into focus by one common thread.

Oh, she is absolutely, undeniably, unequivocally, an ass.


	10. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: [kitbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitbug) is my security blanket tbh
> 
> thanks for looking it over for me :)

Flour. Yeast. Oil. Salt. Water.

There isn’t much she remembers about her mother, but she remembers this. Remembers her mamae’s sleeves pushed up and her hair tied back, remembers her grumbling over a flour-scattered table. Pouring her anger into the dough, she used to say. Remembers how that anger drifted away as she lifted Athi up to help, knees covered in white and a tiny little loaf made from a tiny little scrap, all crust and no crumb.

She’s not quite angry. Still, she leaves the mixer on its shelf.

Flour. Yeast. Oil. Salt. Water. Mix, then turn out. Knead until smooth.

Her hands know the motions, so her mind is free to wander.

She’d gotten it all wrong. Every move, for months, all _wrong_. She wants to smother Cullen in apologies until he lets one seep into an unguarded crack in that armor he’s built up against her. But then, that’s never worked before, and he deserves to be pissed at her, deserves his anger more than she deserves hers. So she’ll let him soak in it if he wants to. She would want to.

Solas is . . . an entirely different sort of wrong. What she wants from him, she can’t ask for, but why not? Who said that anyway? Still, somehow, she’s made it right back to hovering over his name on her phone and it’s fucking exhausting, staying this close and this far away.

[ _im sorry_ ]

That was all the apology she had managed to send. She had pecked out an explanation, then deleted it three times. It’s so far from enough, those two words on their own, and she’s getting sick of saying them, but any more and she’ll probably find a way to fuck it all up again.

Again, she wonders if maybe she should just stay away. Stay alone. She wonders, and she worries and she pours it into the dough.

She’s always been good on her own, always been fine. People tend to leave, eventually, that’s life and so it’s better that way. Safer. No attachments, nothing real. No roots that can’t be torn up and replanted.

It had taught her to be quick on her feet. She learned to pack light and rely on her instincts, on what information she could gather in the span of a breath and then she’d blurt out her answer with the exhale. Always been that way, always been called “hasty” and “reckless” and “fool” but it had _worked_. At least until now.

So what had changed?

Athi glances over at her phone, blank and full bars, and she knows exactly what changed, but not why it changed everything.

She shapes the dough into a neat, loose ball to rise, then curls up on the sofa to wait with a cup of tea. She doesn’t particularly care for tea, but it seems like a good drink for soul-searching, and the fruity stuff is all right. Or mint, but there isn’t any.

If she hadn’t just taken a weekend off, she’d go visit Ren. It has been too long, and there's so much space up there. So much air. Maybe she will anyway, Segritt-be-damned.

He doesn’t respond until late; until one more cup, and an episode and a half of some so-called spooky sci-fi shit, and a pile of Cullen’s things by the door.

[ _I am sorry as well._ ]

She smiles, calls it a win, sets it aside.

Then she takes out her dough, knocks it back, and lets it rise again.

—   —   — 

Cullen comes by the next afternoon. He brings her french press—she had left a toothbrush at his place, too, but decides not to mention it—and a small, simple, unmarked box.

“I’d already bought it,” he explains. “For your birthday. Thought I’d return it, but . . .” he shrugs.

Her chest aches as she holds his peace offering in her hands, all their good moments suddenly remembered. Midnight drives and the farmer’s market and tools spilled out across his driveway.

“Thank you, I—”

_never deserved you, not even a little._

She can’t finish her sentence, just stands there dumb. Picking at the cardboard corner with her nails.

He takes his tent and his sweatshirt and his laptop charger and a watch that had dropped behind her bedside table, and a pair of underwear that had found its way into her laundry, and his toothbrush and a veritable salon’s worth of hair products and a couple bottles of his favorite beer.

He packs up his car with those bits of his life that had tangled with hers, and she steps back from the curb.

Then: “Varric finished his book.” She blurts it out quick, before she can swallow it back down.

Cullen lifts his brow in a silent _“So?”_

"I mean, it still needs edited and won’t be published for a while, but anyway, everyone’s getting together at the bar this weekend to celebrate, and . . .” she smiles gently, a peace offering of her own. “You should come.”

"Why?”

“They liked you. Still like you. And you liked being a part of it all.”

She lifts her chin. _Tell me I’m wrong—_ but he doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don't want this to get messy, you and me.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

He looks at her, hard and suspicious, and he sighs. “I’ll think about it.” Then he leaves her in his rearview.


	11. Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: [kitbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitbug) deserves a medal. 
> 
> that is all.

Cullen doesn’t show.

It’s not all that surprising. Too soon, she knows, for being friends, but she had prepared in case he did. Fessed up earlier this week, cleared his name and sullied her own, paved the way for him to be welcome. Cass had been “not angry, just _disappointed_ ” and Josie’s hundred questions hadn’t been fun, but the rest had let her off easy. Because break-ups are inherently unfair.

Still feels good to have tried. And to have the hard part done with.

They take over the bar, Varric and his people. Most are hers, too, though there are some new faces mixed in with the familiar. Hawke, Fenris, Aveline, friends from “back home,” Varric says, and they seem like good people. Tough to tell from behind the counter.

Working the party’s not a total loss for her, though. He buys all the drinks, but insists everyone tip their bartenders well, which inspires the other patrons toward generosity. Or, and more likely, they just don’t want their gin-and-tonic to be ignored for a more lucrative crowd.

Her attention _is_ easily bought.

A shout goes up again, another welcome to the party as a cool rush of air sweeps in.

Athi seals the shaker and glances up. Solas, gray scarf and black coat and warm congratulations for the host-of-honor who jerks his head toward the bar. It's too loud to hear, but probably some form of “I'm buying,” like he's given to all the rest.

She flips the glass over, rim half-coated in salt. Empties the shaker over fresh ice, finishes with lime, deposits it in front of a starry-eyed man who licks all the salt off in seconds.

She's not one to judge, but that just makes her tongue hurt.

Solas catches her eye as she goes for the taps, carves his way through all the bodies to the bar. The seats are filled by now, even his, and she has drinks in her hand with more already in her head.

“Beer?” she asks him, clear enough that he gets the gist of it.

A man of restraint, he barely nods, barely even smiles. But he looks at her softly. Affectionately, if she’s not mistaken.

No time for reading into it, though. Maybe later she can wax poetic, but right now she's swamped and this bar was built for neither speed nor efficiency, so there's no time to do anything but move. She cracks open a bottle of something he might like, slides it down the bar into his hand. He approves, of course; she has a knack for knowing.

Also, she’s seen both his stash of spirits and his fridge, so her guess is well-educated.

As the night goes on and the drinks get harder, the line between friend and friendly gets blurred. It becomes Hawke’s mission to absorb all the strangers—that, or chase them out. He flirts, bold and shamelessly, spills more than one drink on more than one unsuspecting lap. The place clears out quickly. Some steadfast remain, but you can get a drink at better places than this, so most of them leave.

Darts end up banned for the rest of the night. One of the newcomers says her aim gets better when she feeds it liquor, but as the brand-new holes in the bar’s ancient wood-paneled walls can attest, it turns out that’s a lie.

It’s an event of its own: collecting the darts from unwilling hands, dodging the woman’s slurred and persistent and impressively charming advances, unhooking the boards from the wall when someone suggests they use knives instead.

“Hey Tali, cover me?” she asks on her way to the office. “I need a ten.”

Tali’s new, works part-time, a few shifts here and there and she’s already good. Still slow on the more complicated drinks, but confident and learning. At the very least, the place won’t fall apart in the next ten minutes.

Athi stashes everything on Segritt’s desk and slips out the back.

With the air gone so cold, it's hard to believe she was sunbathing only a week ago. It’s quiet. A little creepy. There’s not much light back here, one lonely bulb mounted over the door. But if she moves beyond its dull glow, a handful of stars hang in a long strip of sky sandwiched between the brick.

She used to come out here on her smoke breaks. Smoking and thinking and quiet and she misses it. Quit a month after she took the job. Sera had given an ultimatum and she’d been meaning to anyway. She never liked being tied to things, and had lost too many lighters, been forced to go without too many times to pretend she wasn’t tethered.

But old habits die hard. Smoking and thinking and quiet and she’d bought a pack on Monday. She pulls out the flattened cardboard and lights her last indulgent cigarette. After this, she won’t buy another. This is it. The very last.

That first hard pull and its heady buzz, warm around her lungs and between her fingers and the door squeals open. Solas shoves his hands in his pockets as he stands up there on the steps, underdressed and uncomfortable.

He came looking for her. There’s something—

_dizzying_

—satisfying in that.

“I did not know you smoked.”

An observation that always sounds like judgment.

“Used to.” She smiles wryly. “And I'm weak.”

“As am I,” and he leans against the wall beside her.

One more sinful breath, then she offers it to him. He looks at her, at the cigarette, at her again. Considering. A fleeting sense of _déjà vu_ , then the smallest touch, his fingertips sliding electric along her knuckles as he takes it. She can’t watch as he puts it to his lips, that’s not good for thinking. Not good for speaking.

“I know we’re good or whatever,” she says, staring straight up and seeing nothing. “But I am really sorry about what happened. I should have trusted you.”

“Why?”

Sometimes he asks the strangest fucking version of a question. Makes her sit up and pay attention, like getting called on in class when she‘s counting ceiling tiles.

“Um, because we’re friends. And friends trust each other.”

“Friends.” He says it like a new word. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

“It is true,” she insists. “Don’t you trust Varric?”

“Certainly, to a point. Some might say that trust must be earned.”

“Hm.” She watches the smoke they share curl around itself, their own creation. No two alike. “Sounds a bit stingy. Maybe you should just choose your friends carefully.”

“Wise words.”

“In any case,” she adds, “you’ve earned mine. I don’t remember everything from that night, or even very much, but . . . you took care of me. I remember that.”

He takes a quick puff, passes it back. _Savor it!_ she wants to remind him, _It’s my last_. He doesn't say anything, but she can feel his eyes on her as she takes a long, slow drag. Clearly, he’s not burdened by the same distractions she is.

“I just . . .” A deep, empty breath; the air feels like ice. “I guess I don’t know what we are.”

“Friends,” and he looks so smug about it.

“No, I mean, we are but—” she rests her head on the rough red wall. _Savor it_ on his next breath _._ “See, Sera and I, we’re like gym shoes in a washing machine.”

“Yes, the likeness is uncanny,” he says. He chuckles and she feels herself smile in response before she even thinks to. It might be her favorite sound.

She takes the cig from his hand. “I _mean_ , smart-ass, when we piss each other off, there's a lot of noise and it sounds for sure like everything’s going to fall apart, but then we always come out clean. So I've learned not to worry that we'll break anything, because we can take it.”

“I see.”

“My point is”—the last drag of that last cigarette and she holds its heat in her lungs for as long as she can before grinding the ember out beneath her sole—“I don't know what we are, you and I. Shoes in a dryer or glass figures on a shelf. I don't know if we'll break when we tumble.”

“You and I will be fine.”

“I’m not careful with people, Solas.” A confession. A warning. A kindness.

“I can take it.”

So certain, so sure. Almost enough for the both of them. Dim alley light on the crease near his eye, the lift in his cheek, the curve of his lips. A man of restraint, and she hangs on every give and tell.

“Now, are you finished dwelling on your great sins and ineffective slights?”

“Probably not,” she admits.

“Would you like to dwell on mine, instead?”

“Yours?”

“My pride was wounded and I lashed out at you. It was petty. Childish.”

“That's right,” she teases, “you were a bit of a prat.”

“Yes, I was. And I am truly, deeply sorry for it. Will you forgive me?”

“Of course."

“There, see? Not so fragile as you think.”

It's not that easy, but the thought is a comforting one. The thought of not being careful. Of not trying, only being, the way she was in their beginning. No fistful of control, no mask, no running away.

Comforting and, of course, completely terrifying.

An elbow to her arm interrupts the downward turn of the same old spiral. “You’re dwelling again, aren’t you?”

“I told you I wasn't done.”

A laugh at her expense; worth it, to hear his.

“So,” he clears his throat, redirects, “it seems your other shoe has insisted on a dance floor. They were working to clear some space when I left.”

This old bar has never seen so much life. “You dance?”

“Not this kind of dancing, I’m afraid. Do you?”

Not this kind of dancing. A vision of spotlights and sweeping fabric, romance and tension and his hand at her back.

“Yes. But only this kind.”

“Ah.”

“I think you’d like it, though.”

A slow, thoughtful breath. A give. “Perhaps I would. With the right partner.”

Then he looks at her pointedly. A tell.

A different vision, less space, less structure, less light and a whole lot more fun. A whole lot more dangerous.

She shivers, tucks her fingers under her arms to thaw. “Is that your way of asking me to dance?”

It was only a tease, meant to unsettle him the way he'd unsettled her. Meant to throw off his unflappable calm, but he is steady as a ship on a mirror sea as he pushes off the wall and faces her. His full attention is almost overwhelming after so many sideways glances.

“Yes.”

Sober but spinning, she might be drunk on a word. It’s only dancing, but she's completely forgotten why she ever stayed away. Why, when he can make her feel so brave, so breathless? So unbreakable?

“Let's go, then,” is on her lips when the door bursts open again.

“Dammit, woman,” Segritt barks when he spots her. “I don't pay you to fuck out back! Get your ass in here _now_ , and clean up the mess that new girl's made of things.”

It's a bracing change of pace.

He doesn’t wait for her response to let the door slam shut; he always assumes obedience.

Athi curses under her breath. “He’s not even supposed to be in tonight. Gods, I’m sorry you had to hear that. He, uh, handles stress really well.”

“Yes, I noticed. Are you all right?”

He's backlit, expression unclear, but his voice is so soft, and her brand smells so good on him.

All right? This high is fucking _untouchable_.

“Yeah. I am.”

—   —   —

She gets home closer to dawn than usual, shoes kicked off by the door and the suggestion of sun throwing weird shadows on the walls. Any other night and she'd be ready to curl up and crash on the nearest soft surface. Her bed, if she could make it. The sofa, if she couldn't.

But tonight, her veins still hum with potential energy, stored up from brushed fingers and a shared cigarette, and the way he'd come to find her and all the silences between their words, and a thousand other tiny things, things full of meaning.

Unless . . .

Unless she only wants them to be meaningful. She's read too far before into things that weren't her business. Paid attention to what she saw, felt, heard, and not what she was told. But people aren't always ready to be known so well. Sometimes they choose, and it doesn't match what they appear to have already decided.

Sometimes, paying attention means a broken heart.

 _Well fuck you too_ , she thinks in the general direction of her self-preservation, but it's already done its job. She wants, and she is afraid to want. She hopes, and she is afraid to hope.

     [   _hey. haven't heard from you in a while. still alive?_ ]

Ren’s text waits on her phone with a few dozen others from the drunker versions of her friends, unopened until the night was over, and unanswered still. Not that it’s so difficult to type out _yeah still kicking_ but she wants to say everything, and where would she even start?

_Ren I met this guy and he has eyes like the ocean and a voice like silk and Ren, he’s ten years older (or so) but Ren, he makes me feel wild and fearless and frightened and home and I fucked up again, Ren. Got mixed up in my own damn head, you know, like I do, but then I hurt someone, and I wasted so much time trying not to. What if I missed my chance, what if he doesn’t want me, what if he does and I hurt him too? I think it would kill me Ren what do I do? Ren he wants to dance with me . . ._

Her head is cloudy, and she can feel a recklessness coming on.

_What do I do?_


End file.
